Met Jackson Sze, and here's a door

Before my usual blurb about whatever I posted have to say I met Jackson Sze at a workshop at our school over the weekend. He's a really good artist and a damn good painter and he's worked on some cool stuff. Ended the day with a signed copy of Battle Milk 2, it was a good day haha. I really want to paint after his workshop.

Now back on topic, and something out of my comfort zone but homework is homework. Had to make a door of any type (Sci-fi, Fantasy, etc.), and originally I had planned a pretty elaborate sci-fi door. However, two days before I had to turn in the assignment I realized I had no idea how I was going to texture the whole thing let alone unwrap it.

So after a bit of freaking out I redoubled my efforts on a fantasy door. What started as a dwarf head/door I came up with this instead. Some kind of door to an otherworldly dimension of demons or miscellaneous other bad things, or good things I suppose anything's possible.

Took a lot of shortcuts to get this done as fast as I did. About 30k tris, and an texture pass greatly helped by dDO. It's all on one 2048 as well with plenty of room left to cram some smaller extras in to. When you gotta get stuff done, you have to get it done though. There was supposed to be light beams coming out of the central crack in the door. My alpha cards only rendered straight-up green, despite my alphas. I'll just ask my professor when I get to class tonight. I will admit I totally stole the Darksiders' Horsemen logo though, I had the largest mental block figuring out something to put on the door.

Also looking at it again, it should be noted the door opens inward, and thanks to my friend Chris (Same name I know.) for letting me use his lighting rig. Makes things instantly prettier haha.

Programs used: zBrush, Maya, 3Ds Max, 3dCoat, dDO, Photoshop

Death Notes

Had this badboy lurking around in my notes for awhile, totally forgot about him. Did this way back when I did Death's zBrush sculpt. All the notes are from the same class as well. I kinda zoned out for a bit and about 20 minutes later it was break time and this was done. Kinda sad about the closure of the Vigil Games as well, the Darksiders series just oozed style just needed some more substance and it would of been great. Kinda sad I'll never get to see Fury and Strife get their own games now.

Death con Color

Tis' Colored! Got done yesterday, and today I see all the problems with it. Mainly with the back of his torso, it's crazy dark as is. I guess it looked better the other day or something. Which is why it's a good reason to get an outside opinion of your work, or just take a break and come back to your work. Seeing things with fresh eyes helps out a lot when your doing anything. I've probably spent over 50+ hours on this thing, and it took me a good night of rest to see problems I couldn't see yesterday.

Anyways, I'll probably go back and tweak this some more, fix the back, and also try messing with some color choices. I tried to keep to the color scheme I was referencing, but the boots and gauntlets (that I made up) were from a different 'armor set' and don't quite mesh with the colors as they are. It could even be a design issue, and I think that's the main reason. The boots are a completely different style compare to the waist armor, and I think that's what breaks it. Might just have to go back and remodel those.

Just when I thought I was done, I find more work I have to do haha. Reminds me of the quote from Leonardo DaVinci - "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

Darksiders 2 Death

Been awhile since I posted, but only for a lack of material to post. So wow... almost 1k pageviews again and I'm getting hits from places like Kenya haha. So thank you again to all you anonymous vistors. Hopefully the amount of work/me rambling about art stuff in this post will tide me over for awhile again.

Anyways, here's my sculpt of Death from Darksiders 2! Did it in less than a week as well, I would of taken longer if I had more than a week to do it in. As you may or may not be able to tell I had to rush through some stuff just to get it done. I would of liked to of figured out how to make certain armor pieces as I saw them in the concept work, but I didn't have the time. The gauntlets however are of my own design, as I couldn't find something more than simple, and less than epic in the images I looked through. I think they look like they fit in surprisingly well, but I had spent the last few days doing the rest of the armor so that helped me along with their design too.

Doing my best to nail the art style was also quite a challenge. Only going off the concept will get you so far, you really have to look at some normal anatomy also to figure out what 'that muscle' looks like so you can exaggerate it properly. Case in point I did not realize that the muscles over his shoulder blades were actually his shoulder blades, till I looked at some normal stuff and saw that those were the exaggerated muscles on your scapula. It also does not want to obey the normal rules of proportion most of the time. To make the head look right I had to extend the neck up quite a bit, but overall it looks right doesn't it? Having your own style is cool and all, but the rules are there for a reason. However, knowing when to break them is quite possibly one of the most important things you could learn.

Anyways his coattail/kilt parts (I don't know the proper name) aren't ragged yet cause I figured it would be easier to do when I make my low poly version with some alpha maps. Speaking of which, this almost 4.6mil poly model will be pretty useless unless I can get a nice low poly version finished. Which is also my next challenge as well as unwrapping/texturing this whole thing. Wish me luck!

Lilith Colored

Just couldn't stop after I did a quick greyscale. I've been going nuts drawing lately, maybe I've unlocked my inner potential? Most likely, I think I've lost some semblance of my sanity. (Or maybe it's the fact I haven't slept in over 48 hours.) No animator, concept artist I've ever met has seemed well... stable haha. Maybe that's why they can crank out all the cool stuff we see?

Paul Richards Style Test

Was looking over Paul Richard's work on Darksiders, and I felt like trying to see if I could nab his style. I believe the concept was for the character Lilith, who didn't make it in game. Took me awhile to get a feel for, but I think I got some of it down. A lot of transitions from small to large, and curves... lots of them. Also drawing the rough-in quickly to get a strong sense of flow and gesture. Then it's just refining from there I thinks. Finished it up in my Art History class tonight, and as an added bonus real notes are being taken for once haha.